5 July was polling day was in Britain but it took three weeks to count the service vote. Meanwhile Churchill flew to Bordeaux to rest before moving on to Berlin. Shortly after arriving in the German capital Churchill, with his daughter Mary, toured its ruins including Hitler’s Chancellery. When Churchill observed the German populace he said his “hate died with their surrender.” On the same day he met President Truman for the first time. A few days later the two leaders agreed to use the atomic bomb against Japan.
Churchill’s last public event as the British Prime Minister occurred on 21 July when he took the victory salute in Berlin.
On 25 July Churchill left Stalin and Truman, without saying goodbye, to return to London with Attlee to await the results of the election. On 28 July Clement Attlee returned to Berlin as Prime Minister.
Unknown to anyone but his doctor, Churchill had a premonition of the results in a dream. “I dreamed that life was over. I saw it was very vivid my dead body under a white sheet on a table in an empty room. I recognized my bare feet projecting from under the sheet. It was very life-like. Perhaps this is the end.”
The concession speech included the admirable comment: “I thank the British people for many kindnesses shown towards their servant.” This remark stands in contrast to Stalin’s reported comment that he was surprised because he had supposed that Churchill would have “fixed” the results. On 29 July Churchill signed “finis” in the visitors’ book at Chequers. Many high-ranking officials who owed their positions to Churchill, including Lord Louis Mountbatten, were now expressing Labour sympathies.
On 16 August the House recognized Churchill’s war leadership. The new Prime Minister spoke for all when he said that Churchill’s “place in history is secure.” [11]
PRIME MINISTER 1951-1955
After the general elections in 1950 that were unsuccessful for the Conservatives, Churchill tried, by any means, to discredit the Labour government. This way he hoped to bring nearer the next elections. What he criticised most was the armament policy Churchill did not oppose the armament race, but claimed that everything was done wrong and not how it would be done if he were the Prime Minister.
The position of the Labour Party was weakened by the fact that their policy worsened the living conditions of the people and brought along the increase of the danger of war. In 1951, the Labour leaders had to witness severe dissensions. Under these bad circumstances in the country and in the Labour party, new preschedule general elections had to be held.
The most important question to be answered by the elections was the question of war and peace. People were disappointed at the actions of the Labour ministers, at the same time they were afraid of the Conservatives who might lead the nation in a war. Churchill did all he could to oppose this fear and proposed to hold a summet meeting with US and SU prime ministers after the elections.
The Conservatives won the elections, but not with a great majority (Labourists 295, Conservatives 321 seats). In October 25, 1951, Winston Churchill, now almost 77 years old, became Prime Minister for the last time. [3]
The government of 1951-55 was a very consensual one. There were occasional flourishes of partisan rhetoric, but little partisan action. Or, as Churchill said at the beginning of Parliament:
“What the nation needs is several years of quiet steady administration, if only to allow the Socialist legislation to reach its full fruition. What the House needs is a period of tolerant and constructive debating on the merits of the questions without nearly every speech on either side being distorted by the passions of one election or the preparations for another.” [2]
In the domestic policy Churchill made no considerable changes. The social care system that was developed by the Labourists after the war was not noticeably altered. Even in such an important field for the Conservatives as nationalisation they acted weakly. Only car and metal industries were denationalised.
As usual, Churchill concentrated most of his energy on foreign affairs.
Armament Race
Churchill, who had criticised the Labourists for an unsatisfactory politics in armament, decided to restrict the armament to a certain extent. The sums that were expected to be spent on armament over three years were decided to be spent over four years. Many were amazed at this step of the Conservatives. However, the problem was not that Churchill wanted to slow down the speed of armament race, but he was afraid of an economical boom, and for that fear he relieved the load of defense expenses on British economy.
Churchill’s cabinet paid a lot of attention to the research on the atomic bomb. Already in 1945, after the first successful testings of this weapon in the USA, he understood the great importance of it. The McMahon Act in 1946 in which the USA decided not to give the UK any information on nuclear weapons was an unpleasant surprise for Churchill here it is appropriate to point out that English scientists participated actively in creating the atomic bomb in the USA.
Another surprise shocked Churchill and also many others in the western world when the first successful Soviet atomic bomb testing was announced. This happened in 1949. From this moment on until returning to power Churchill criticised the Labour government for the backwardness in armament race. But, as it was discovered later, Churchill had attacked the Labourists for no reason already in 1945 the Labourists started a program for creating British nuclear potential. The co-ordinating committee of this project consisted of many known political leaders, including C. Attlee (the PM), E. Bevin (the Foreing Secretary), G. Morrison (the Home Secretary) and others. When Churchill came to power he discovered that the Labour government had already spent 100 million pounds on this nuclear program, at the same time being able to hide these expenses from Parliament. Churchill did not make changes in the project, and in October 3, 1952 the UK tested its first nuclear bomb.[3]
Churchill’s government was convinced that Great Britain can only restore its glory by the ownership of nuclear weapons. Still, one would not doubt now that after the World War II the United Kingdom was no real world power any more. English physicists G. Thizzard and P. Blackett pointed out that Britain will never become a great power again the British are one of the great nations, but not a world power. Under these circumstances it would have been wiser not to spend money on nuclear weapons, but to improve the economy that had suffered from the war. But this was not done. Churchill’s adviser Professor Lindeman was of the opinion that if the UK cannot independently create a nuclear weapon and must completely rely on the USA, it will be at the level of a “a second-grade country” who is allowed only to give support forces.
In 1955 the Conservative government decided to start the production of nuclear weapons. On May 15 1957 the UK tested its first hydrogen bomb.[3]
Churchill and the Soviet Union
To understand Churchill’s attitude towards the Soviet Union, it is essential to point out what he said in Fulton, 1946.
First, as one of the architects of the Grand Alliance he, in effect, recognized the tragic reality of its dissolution. No one else of similar authority had said what he did so plainly or so publicly before. And this, too, he had foreseen. At the Cairo Conference in 1943, he told Harold Macmillan of his fears about the rise of Soviet power, and the failure of the West to observe and respond to the danger.
Second, he traced the roots of the dawning conflict to Soviet territorial ambitions. As he put it, “What they desire are the fruits of war, and the indefinite expansion of their power and doctrines.”
Power and doctrine Winston Churchill had read history and he knew that ideology was not simply or solely the reason for Soviet aggression and subversion; it was, in sinister combination, the rationalization of conquests otherwise coveted. The Soviet commissars were fulfilling, on a grander scale, the expansionist ambitions of the Russian czars. This continuing, expansionist impulse was felt in Eastern Europe in the 1940’s.
Third, he urged the West to be firm in the form of both closer British Commonwealth -American association and a new European unity, from which, he said, “no nation should be outcast.” Already again, prophetically, he was anticipating the then almost unimaginable rapprochement between France and Germany. Most of all, Churchill gently warned, firmness required American involvement; we cannot afford, he said in politer words than these, a repetition of the catastrophic American retreat from international responsibility after World War I.
He saw the emerging parallel in 1946; in less than a year, the United States Army had shrunk by nearly 90 percent. The boys were coming home, but Churchill was reminding us that now all Europe and the world were our neighborhood.
He was looking toward a system of collective security; he was anticipating NATO by three years, each year marked by recurrent and escalating crisis with the Soviet Union. So he asked the Western powers “to stand together,” and he concluded: “There is nothing [the Russians] admire so much as strength, and there is nothing for which they have less respect than weakness, especially military weakness,”
It is at this point, for the most part, that the reading, citation, and interpretation of the Fulton speech all stop. Probably that is because it was Churchill’s sounding of the alarm about Soviet misdeeds which drew the most attention and the most controversy at the time. Indeed that aspect of the speech aroused nearly violent protest among many people, who once again were hoping that they had finished the war to end all wars. In New York a few days after Fulton, the police had to be called out to protect the former Prime Minister from hostile demonstrators parading outside the Waldorf-Astoria, where he was staying.
There are three other points Winston Churchill made at Fulton which apply with equal force today but which do not seem to be as clearly heard or heeded in the councils of power.
First, the address was a plea for peace, not conflict. It began with a reminder that “our supreme task and duty is to guard the homes of the common people from the horrors and miseries of another war.” Churchill viewed that prospect with undisguised apprehension. He spoke of future world conflict, and I quote, “as incomparably more rigorous than what the world has just been through. The Dark Ages may return the Stone Age may return now on the gleaming wings of science, and what might shower unmeasurable material blessings upon mankind may even bring about its total destruction.
Some fifty years ago, when the West held a nuclear monopoly, Churchill was not talking of “winnable” nuclear wars; he was worried about nuclear wars in which the only winner would be death. And to him, even then, the issue was urgent: “Beware I say; time may be short. Do not let us take the course of allowing events to drift along until it is too late.”
Second, the former and future Prime Minister insisted that there was a basis on which to deal with the Soviets. He had stated it before, shortly after the outbreak of the war in 1939. In another famous phrase which is usually only half-quoted, he said: “Russia… is a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma; but perhaps there is a key. That key is Russian national interest.”
The part about national interest is the part of the quote that is often left out. But in 1946, at Fulton, Churchill identified precisely what that interest was: The Soviets might want expansion, but they did not want war. The inevitable truth of that principle, in the atomic age, still eludes foolish and dangerous people on both sides of the Iron Curtain, who assume that on the other side, a first strike is being planned, a nuclear exchange is being actively considered, and therefore, arms control is an impossible dream or an undesirable snare. To them, Churchill replied, 40 years in advance: “What we have to consider… is the permanent prevention of war.” This, he believed, was in the Russian interest as surely as our own.